Tag Archives: melbourne

I know the official year of the Caravan Music Club being founded was 2007, but I never went to any of the house party gigs except for a few at someone else’s house they helped put together but never at Pete’s place.

I already knew it was not going to be on this year, given everything else that has happened I don’t blame them. Plus I almost KO’ed myself in that heat. February is too hot to have an even like this outside.

Was some random ringing up Biggsy on 7th Feburary 2020 who confirmed that it was not going ahead and last year’s was the last one ever. I cannot find any official announcement at all and the station manager did not answer my inquiry.

It is a lot of work to organise each year including Ian Bland re-writing all the song lyrics, the band having to practice and each of the people singing having to do their songs. Dan’s gig will be the substitute for it any way and at least the band will be compensated for their work monetarily for once.

Was some word of another event replacing it, good luck to it and I hope it goes well.

I was interested in this session as I follow a few sex workers on social media and even got asked by someone on Facebook to help look for someone as I was “familiar” with the sex industry. It should be fairly obvious by now my relationship with the industry, I have sex about once every two years if I am lucky.

I did follow one of the panel members but they blocked me and I can’t even fathom the reason, people just do a snap turn on Twitter and you can’t take it personally. Rita Therese talked about the need to curate herself so she did not turn off prospective clients and that she can’t promote causes as it will also distance some people from her.

The premise of the session was to discuss sex worker voices in print and the media. There was criticism from the audience Q&A that there weren’t enough currently working sex workers on the panel. There is a history with the MWF of them having an event around the “Invisible Women” book that included several SWERFs on the panel. Rita Therese said she had protested that event and now she is on a panel “suck it bitches!”

There was some discussion about the tragic incident in Sydney and it was a workplace death. Whenever someone is a sex worker and something happens to them that is the thing that is focussed upon by the media.

Nadine Chemali mentioned that we mainly hear from white sex workers and people of colour and those in marginalised communities are afraid to speak up as they are being persecuted. In a lot of cultures people are not open to speaking about sex. The many “massage” places around the place still have people who work at them and they are not heard from at all.

Nic Holas said he is out about his sex work and starring in hardcore porn, but not everyone at his work knows about it. He is more embarrassed from taking money from News Corp than working in porn. There was some discussion about short form writing and online outlets being more receptive to articles written by current sex workers, but if you work for a tabloid expect it to sensationalised.

Fiona Patten said she was outed as a former sex worker to her parents when someone faxed them the front page of a newspaper. She said she was the first former sex worker to serve in Victorian parliament “but many of my clients come before me”. Fiona and Rita Therese both said they had supportive publishers in writing their books and Fiona always likes seeing new sex worker voices.

Jules Kim from the Scarlett Alliance and the member of the audience from Vixen Collective both spoke of the need to be more inclusive and did bring up the past controversies of panels about sex workers that did not have any sex workers on the panel.

There were some good recommendations of books written by sex workers but I did not take them down. I am sure the panellists will fill you in if you get in touch.

It was a good discussion with a lot of things covered. You can follow some of the panellists on social media or just a sex worker if you want a more interesting feed.

Jordan Shanks stated in his show he does not really care about reviews and seeing as the show’s run sold out (this was a bonus show), but I just wanted to say a few words about it. The last thing I saw in the venue was the After Hours Cabaret Club which feature Memphis Mae pouring McDonalds nuggets all over herself.

As he said himself he is preaching to the choir in his show as he knows which end of the political spectrum he is delivering his message to. It was a very young audience and it is a fallacy that young people these days do not care about anything. They care about too much and having grown up with social media as a part of their lives they are right across important social and political issues as are discussed in the show.

One of the jokes in the show was that it is not just a stand up show. It is a long form version of one of Friendlyjordies’ YouTube videos where he gets to expand on one of the topics that he would usually do in a video.

The main premise of the show is exposing what at poor economic manager John Howard was of the economy with many twists and turns that go into explaining this. There was a detour back to the 1940s which I would have liked to see as a show of its’ own but I’m just weird.

The $1.3 Trillion figure that the Howard government cost Australia can’t have just come out of his arse, he must have gotten it somewhere. I can’t say I have heard it mentioned anywhere else, but then again I don’t really read the Financial Review or pay that much attention to financial advice.

Having the show on the day after the 2019 Federal Election was called added an extra something. Friendlyjordies knows his audience and also says he is not aligned with one side or the other.

What he does do is encourage the audience to get their apathetic friends to register to vote as the electoral roles close the day before Good Friday (18th April) and you have no business in complaining if you couldn’t be bothered to vote.

There were a lot of laughs in the show mixed in with the factoids. Some people laughed at oddly specific things, like the two women sitting next to me who laughed at the brand of make up in one slide.

The show was filmed by Luke their photographer/videographer and Sandi says they always use him. Not sure if they are going to release a DVD or it will just be used for promotion like the last time they were in Melbourne for a show.

He did take the opportunity to do some edge lord bullshit like the school shootings joke which amused him greatly as the audience took about a minute to decide if it was funny or not. Using dead soldiers at Kokoda as a punchline was pretty low also. I am sure he will not get any blowback for using ANZAC as a joke as he is not Muslim, a person or colour or female.

Cheap shots abound in this show, but they come and go so quickly they kind of blur into each other. A bit rich piling onto Yumi Stynes when everyone else in the mainstream media he claims to hate has done so too.

When I was looking to get into university the most popular course was Journalism at RMIT, to the point they made 4000 people a year sit the Journalism Entrance Test. I made it through to the interview stage that was for about 20 first year places. These days why would you even bother as there are many other ways to get your opinion out to the masses even if nobody reads it.

I do know some people in the media but mainly the good ones such as community radio or people I have known for a long time. I do sympathise with people from the Age who had to go work at the Australian. There are good people working at ABC 774 Melbourne as they used to be on RRR FM in Melbourne.

I would like to see Friendlyjordies do a guest spot on Biggsy’s show on RRR FM as they could have an informed chat on several topics of note.

He has done a video on Melbourne vs. Sydney since doing his show down here. I would like to see more of it outside of the usual tropes.

If you have missed the show’s Melbourne run then you are too late since it has already sold out. Other state hopefully in the future.

In all a good economics lecture and political history lesson with the “cool teacher” from your high school who let you swear in class and call him by his first name.

In this documentary we follow Phillipe Mora as he retraces the history of his family through World War II and before while painting the scenes for a graphic novel about his families’ experiences and finding out things he never knew before.
During the Q&A after the film the director said he did know some of the things that Phillipe was going to find out beforehand, but he wanted his genuine reactions on film when he found out things so he did not tell him exactly what to expect.

Mirka Mora is also interviewed throughout the film and reveals some surprising things about why she paints a lot of ducks and birds (phallic symbols) and the significance of fences in her works that they represent the people left behind in the camps after she was rescued.

Phillipe Mora’s film career is covered including his debut at Cannes that caused a commotion for “humanising” Hitler with colour close up footage of him sourced from the CIA archives. I knew that he had directed the Howling III and Mad Dog Morgan with Dennis Hopper but not the other movies.

There are some very touching scenes with Phillipe meeting one of the children rescued by his father and the daughter of the family who sheltered his mother’s family during WWII. As he said he had to make the film as the original witnesses were starting to get thin on the ground.

When the story gets into Phillipe’s fathers work with the French Resistance it is also very interesting as it turned out Georges Mora worked with Marcel Marceau on some operations involving rescuing children from the Nazis. While they may have had differences in their mayonnaise recipes, their work with the children was never in doubt.

Marcel Marceau was Phillipe’s godfather and a frequent visitor of the family when they were in Australia. Phillipe thought he was a “weirdo” when he was younger due to him wanting to rub the left over olive oil all over himself whenever they had a salad. He did get to know him when he was older and they became good friends.

I don’t actually know when the graphic novel featured in the story is coming out as it is not mentioned in the documentary or during the Q&A afterwards. I am sure it will do very well when it is released.

There was a question of how Mirka Mora’s family was released from the camp when only 100 other people managed to be released. The answer was the French resistance was involved falsifying documents and also the Nazi officials where receptive to bribes.
This was a really enjoyable and interesting documentary about a family I had heard a lot about but didn’t really know their history. As Phillipe and the director said they had wanted to make a story together on the topic before, but didn’t want it to be so serious you would come out of the experience depressed.

The screening I saw it at was the world premiere with a lot of the family in attendance including Mirka Mora who got a lot of applause for yelling out and waving her bouquet around.

It was quite a shame that this documentary did not get a presale into television in Australia and had to be backed by a TV station in France, but they recognise the importance of their history.